<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>in your sweet thoughts would be forgot by MisabeltheMiserable</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26777245">in your sweet thoughts would be forgot</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisabeltheMiserable/pseuds/MisabeltheMiserable'>MisabeltheMiserable</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Vampire Diaries (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Season/Series 04, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Cute, Elena has a bad time, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Guilt, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Really cute, Romance, Season/Series 04, Sire Bond, Temporary Amnesia, i forgot about tyler i'm sorry, once you get past all the misery, please give her a break, this is essentially psychological katabasis, when i say romance i mean ROMANCE</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:40:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,134</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26777245</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisabeltheMiserable/pseuds/MisabeltheMiserable</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"If you want to make me happy then you're going to forget me.” Damon swallowed down the grief, the pain that felt like reaching into his chest to pull out his own heart, inch by inch. "You won’t remember my face, my name, anything about me. Forget you ever met me and never think about me again."</p><p>Damon leaves, and with him goes all memory that he ever existed. But with pieces of her own mind missing, how long will Elena survive without him?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elena Gilbert/Damon Salvatore</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. part one</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi, welcome to my newest contribution to a very dead fandom. This was written largely because I like to make characters suffer and then make them happy again, but mostly because I felt the sire bond arc in S4 was horribly wasted. I've already written the whole thing, and will be posting a chapter every few days.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>There was a face in a photo that Elena wasn't allowed to see. She didn't know why. There was a name in her phone that Elena wasn't allowed to read. She didn't know why. There was a bedroom in the boarding house that Elena wasn't allowed to enter. She didn't know why.</p><p> </p><p>There was a voice in her head that she wasn’t allowed to listen to. It spoke to her every morning when she woke up, saying words that she didn’t hear and couldn’t remember. The voice was attached to a laugh that wasn’t allowed to be familiar.</p><p> </p><p>The voice that she wasn’t allowed to hear would stay with Elena through the day, and for a while she would try to distract herself. There wasn’t much to do, now that she had stopped going to school. Stefan had said that was a good idea, though, after she’d slipped three times in as many weeks since --</p><p> </p><p>Since what?</p><p> </p><p>She didn’t go to school anymore. It was too dangerous. Caroline had managed to pull her off the first two, but the last hadn’t been so lucky. Theresa Hames now lay under the earth in the Mystic Falls cemetery after a brutal animal attack, and Elena didn’t go to school anymore.</p><p> </p><p>The guilt ate her, it chewed and gnawed and bit away pieces of her, cannibalistic and always greedy for more.</p><p> </p><p>Elena was very unhappy as a vampire. That’s what Stefan and Caroline and Bonnie and Jeremy told her, and she supposed they were right. She was certainly very unhappy, at least.</p><p> </p><p>She stayed in the house, because that’s what was safest. Jeremy would be back from school soon, and he’d make a worried face at her if it was too obvious that she hadn’t left her room all day. The kitchen was empty - of course it was, who else would be there? And Elena pulled tomatoes from the refrigerator, and a knife from the block.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> I just don’t know why you wanna bring chilli to a potluck.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>A sharp stab of pain lanced through Elena’s temple and she winced, shaking her head like a cat coming in from the rain. It must be thirst. Turning back to the refrigerator, she took a blood bag from her supply and sliced it open, careful not to spill a drop as she poured it into a glass.</p><p> </p><p>Crumpling the empty bag, she tossed it into the trash can and picked up her knife again. But on the chopping block, the tomatoes were already neatly diced. In confusion, Elena looked at the blade of the knife - wet with tomato juice and seeds. There was a saucepan on the hob beside her, and a peeled onion waiting next to her hand. Had - had she done that? She didn’t remember doing any of it, but it must have taken her at least a few minutes. She didn’t remember. She had picked up the knife, her head had hurt, and now here she was.</p><p> </p><p>Jeremy walked in, saying something to her as he dropped his backpack onto the kitchen table, and she forgot.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>At night, the voice Elena wasn’t allowed to hear began to get louder. She didn’t know what it said, or what it sounded like. Or if she did, she couldn’t remember whenever she tried to think of it. The gaps became more frequent, too, time blinking away as though someone had left her on pause while the world went on around her. Sometimes there were moments when she could swear she’d just been talking to someone, a faint trace of them left lingering on the edges of her mind. But like a phantom in her periphery, it disappeared when she tried to look.</p><p> </p><p>The flashing pain in her head that she’d felt so briefly in the kitchen became a regular visitor in her empty days, and as weeks went by, the pain became less like a flash and more like a bolt being driven through her temple. When Jeremy heard her cry out one morning, he insisted on calling Bonnie. </p><p> </p><p>Bonnie just shook her head, when she arrived. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a vampire, you can’t get headaches. Not from anything natural, anyway.”</p><p> </p><p>“Is it magic, then?” Elena asked. “Has someone done something to me?”</p><p> </p><p>Bonnie went stiff for just a second, and behind her Elena heard her brother shift onto the other foot.</p><p> </p><p>“No,” said Bonnie. “It’s not magic.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Caroline said she was sure Elena was fine. Stefan just said he was sure she’d get better.</p><p> </p><p>Did that mean there was something wrong with her, then? They kept her in the house. She was bad at being a vampire. But she hadn’t always been this bad, she’d been better, back when --</p><p> </p><p>When? </p><p> </p><p>Jeremy pulled her feet into his lap as they sat on the couch, a glass of Ric’s leftover bourbon in one hand, and there was a split second of stark black and icy blue before Elena’s whole body went stiff, head snapping back as her vision whited out and she <em> screamed. </em></p><p> </p><p>When she came back, she was on the floor, Jeremy’s panicked yells coming from the other room as he shouted into the phone receiver, begging Bonnie to <em> help. </em></p><p> </p><p>Bonnie didn’t help. Elena didn’t think she knew how.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Time started to slip. Elena missed it first in moments, minutes, then in hours. She sat herself at the kitchen table and watched the clock while she was alone, not sure how else to make sure that time was passing as it should. Still, she would blink to find herself in different positions, different parts of the house, panting her breaths and bathed in cold sweat as though she was living a nightmare and just couldn’t <em> remember. </em></p><p> </p><p>The voice in her head was so loud now, but she couldn’t hear it. Why couldn’t she hear it? She wasn’t allowed. That was all Elena knew.</p><p> </p><p>The graveyard was cold, the mossy headstones covered in a slick of rainwater, and she was crying when she came back to herself. Crying? Why? The Salvatore family mausoleum stood impassively before her, offering her nothing. She put her hand on the heavy brass handle, freezing under her palm. Blue and black. This time the pain was expected, its predictability nearly welcome. </p><p> </p><p>When it was gone, she held onto it. <em> Remembered </em>it. But she turned away from the mausoleum, walking back the way she must have come. She wasn’t allowed. She didn’t know why.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>There was nothing at home which could help her, so Elena hammered on Bonnie’s door until she pulled it open with a jerk and a wary expression. That hadn’t always been the way Bonnie had looked at her. It was hard to think about, hard to pin down how it had been, before --</p><p> </p><p>Before what?</p><p> </p><p>“Bonnie,” she said, she begged. “There’s something <em> wrong </em> with me. Something’s missing. I can’t think properly, it’s like someone built a wall inside my head and punishes me every time I touch it. Please. I know you know something.”</p><p> </p><p>“I can’t help, Elena, I’m sorry.” Bonnie really did look sorry.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Please.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Tipping her chin up stubbornly, Bonnie shook her head. “I can’t.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>She still didn’t go home. Jeremy had been calling her for an hour now, it was dark and she hadn’t left the house in - weeks? Months? She'd forgotten when it had started.</p><p> </p><p>The boarding house was lit up from the inside, warm lamplight spilling out onto the wet lawn where the curtains hadn’t been pulled across. Had she walked here?</p><p> </p><p>“She’s not getting better.” Caroline was inside, on the couch, and Elena stared through the window at the room she knew so well. How much time had she spent here, talking and plotting and worrying and sitting and drinking and arguing? It felt more like home than her own house.</p><p> </p><p>“She will.” Stefan. Pacing by the fire.</p><p> </p><p>“She’s <em> not. </em> She’s getting worse, and you know it. He must have done it wrong, screwed it up somehow. We should get him back here to do it again, fix his mess.”</p><p> </p><p>“No. Much as I hate it, he did what he promised. Made her forget.”</p><p> </p><p>Caroline said something else, her expression sour and her arms folded, but in the middle of it she said a name that Elena wasn’t allowed to know, and agony exploded through Elena's skull as though her brain was pulling itself apart.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Now that she knew it was there, the wall in her mind felt more like a dam. There was something behind it, and everyone knew what it was but her. It was the thing that was missing, that would slot into place in the yawning, ragged hole that something - someone - had left.</p><p> </p><p>The more she pushed and scratched and clawed, the more it hurt, paroxysms of torturous pain in her head that got closer and closer together. She couldn’t look, wasn’t allowed, but she couldn’t stop trying.</p><p> </p><p>“‘Lena, <em> please, </em> just tell me what to do,” Jeremy begged.</p><p> </p><p>Wiping cold sweat from her forehead, Elena gritted her teeth against the effort it took to speak. “I know that someone’s missing.” Jeremy started to shake his head. “Don’t <em> lie. </em> Someone is gone, and somehow everything they were to me is gone, too.” Still shaking his head in flat denial, her brother looked away and she caught his hand. “Just... <em> please. </em> If you know what this is, why this is happening, <em> help me.” </em> She tried to breathe steadily as pain nipped like teeth at her heels. “I can feel it. Their voice is in my head, they’re <em> everywhere, </em> every gap is somewhere they used to be.”</p><p> </p><p>The look on Jeremy's face barely tried to hide his guilty insincerity. “There wasn’t anyone like that. You’re imagining things, and you need help.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>She didn’t know which she hated more. The galling helplessness of lost time or the pain. Both got worse, there were days together in which Elena didn’t surface, and in the spaces between she wondered if she even wanted to remember the bits she forgot.</p><p> </p><p>Jeremy was away. He was the only thing that made her feel real, made her feel anything like <em> her </em> anymore, so she lay in bed, trying not to think. Thinking hurt. Everything hurt. Sleeping was the only thing she could do without pain, so Elena turned on her side and forced her body to relax, one tense muscle at a time.</p><p> </p><p>The empty side of her bed stared back at her, a vacant gape that struck her as wrong. Shifting her head upwards, Elena traced the blank curve of the other pillow.</p><p> </p><p><em> Why don’t you let people see the good in you? </em> </p><p> </p><p>For once, there was no pain. The words popped into her head, fully formed and with neither her permission nor her understanding. What was that supposed to mean? Shaking her head, she pressed her eyes closed. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Because when people see good, they expect good. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Elena opened her eyes, and the face she’d been searching for all these months was <em> there </em>. Right there. He was lying next to her on the bed, black brows angled in a frown, one arm behind his head and piercing eyes fixed searchingly on her.</p><p> </p><p><em> And I don’t want to have to live up to anyone’s expectations. </em>The room was dark, although she knew it couldn’t be. A flickering neon light filtered through curtains that weren’t hers, and the familiar lump of her little brother lay curled under the sheets on the other bed. A warm palm slid slowly down her wrist, surrounding her hand and lacing their fingers together as she stared and stared at the face that couldn’t be there. Wasn’t there.</p><p> </p><p>Her lips formed the name she wasn’t allowed to know. There was a blinding, bone-white blast of pain. Her whole body bent up from the bed. Then there wasn’t much of anything at all. And then she forgot.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. part two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>There was some annoying fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>buzzing </span>
  </em>
  <span>sound coming from the table by the window. The brand new cell phone was practically jumping off the chipped plywood surface, rickety table rattling from the force of it. Rolling over to turn his face away from the noise, Damon pulled a thin, floppy pillow over his head and groaned. He wasn’t actually hungover - one of the perks of the undead - but he’d felt permanently hungover for two months, now. Since </span>
  <em>
    <span>Thank you for visiting Mystic Falls, VA!</span>
  </em>
  <span> had fallen away in his rearview mirror, every minute had been a physical ache, every moment a reprimand for leaving in the first place. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He got it, of course - how was he supposed to explain to his dumbfuck heart that leaving was the only thing he could have done? Love wasn’t love if it wasn’t real, Damon had learned that the hard way, and he wasn’t going to hold her prisoner in some fucked up, mystical Stockholm syndrome </span>
  <em>
    <span>bullshit</span>
  </em>
  <span>. There couldn’t be a sire bond if she didn’t know he existed at all, that had been Stefan’s theory, and as much as he’d hated it, Damon couldn't argue with his logic. He had to be cut out, like infected flesh, if she was going to have her mind back, her free will.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Of course, it also meant that he couldn’t see her again. Ever. He couldn't risk a resurgence of the sire bond, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever</span>
  </em>
  <span> was an awfully long time to endure when both parties were immortal. He’d have to live every excruciating moment of forever knowing that she was out there, somewhere. If he ever suspected she was anywhere near him, it was now his job to ignore every instinct, every bone in his body and beat of his heart, and to turn tail and run in the opposite direction instead. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t even drop in to stalk her from a distance, on the off-chance she caught the merest glimpse of him. Although at least that meant he wouldn’t have to witness the renaissance of her and Stefan’s relationship. Two months was probably enough time for Stefan to weasel his way back into her newly vacated affections. They’d be back to googly-eyed gazes and syrupy declarations of love by now. Damon tried not to think about that too much.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The cell phone on the table was still buzzing. How did that thing even have any battery left? He had no idea when he’d last charged it. After all, it wasn’t like anyone was going to be calling him. The first thing he’d done after leaving town was grind his old phone underfoot, embracing the destructive impulsivity that usually made him his own worst enemy. It was too much of a temptation. The contacts list was full of phone numbers for friends that had never really been his anyway, and her name was a glaring, accusing beacon in the middle of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>E</span>
  </em>
  <span> section. He couldn’t let himself think about calling her, or he might actually do it, just to listen to her say </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Hello?”</span>
  </em>
  <span> on the other end of the line. He couldn’t let himself scroll back through their long chains of texts, read every last message she’d ever sent him. From </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘Be there in 5 mins’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>to the rambling conversations they used to have about whatever dumb topic he was using to distract her from the constant stress of her everyday life. Mosquitoes versus wasps. Toaster-ovens. His preferred brand of spaghetti. What she thought about </span>
  <em>
    <span>Looney Tunes. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His picture gallery was full of candids of her that he’d snapped over the last year and a half, always trying to catch her off guard just because he liked the way it made her roll her eyes with an annoyance that couldn’t quite hide her smile, little hands grabbing at his phone so she could see what the photo looked like. He never let her succeed, though, just in case she accidentally discovered that the photos of her were the only ones he ever kept.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He didn’t have anything of her left. Those pictures had been crushed under his heel with the rest of his old cell phone. It made the break that much cleaner, he’d told himself, made him that much more unreachable, and untraceable. When he’d got a new phone, he’d programmed in a single number - Stefan’s, then sent a brusque text to give his brother his new information, and strict instructions to never contact him except in the direst emergency.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Stefan wouldn’t call, of course. He would know that </span>
  <em>
    <span>she</span>
  </em>
  <span> was the only thing Damon would give a damn about, and Stefan had more reason than most to ensure that Damon stayed as far away from her as possible. It was probably just a very determined telemarketer making his phone leap off the table like that. For the fifth time in a row. God, it was noisy. The insistent sound was practically shaking the paper-thin walls of his motel room, and Damon hoped it wouldn’t bring the manager’s wrath down on him. Not that he minded dealing with the sweaty little man in the front office - it might be nice to have someone to work out his frustrations on, actually - he just didn’t want to get up. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’d been drinking his way through the local bar’s whisky supply until the early hours of the morning, compelling the bartender when she tried to kick him out at closing time. At six a.m., she’d wandered out into the weak sunlight, eyes dazed and probably in hypovolemic shock. Damon had followed her out, and was considerate enough to lock up for her when it became clear that she wasn’t going to do it herself. Swimming in a pleasantly numb fog of alcohol and fresh blood, he’d fallen face-down onto his bed in the horrendous room he’d rented in a motel off Route Fifty, somewhere near Folsom, California.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He didn’t have any particular reason for being here. It was just one stop of many, on the road to nowhere at all. After he’d destroyed his old phone, Damon had driven as far and fast as he could. The further he got, the harder it became to make himself keep going, and the harder he’d forced himself. He’d gotten all the way to Minnesota before he couldn’t stand it anymore, slamming on the Camaro’s brakes and executing a very illegal u-turn in the middle of some quiet, one-horse town, and driving hell for leather back the way he came. But at the Virginian border, sanity had reasserted itself with a screech as he remembered all the reasons he’d left in the first place.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Thus it had continued, for weeks. He’d drive like the devil was behind him, repeating a mantra of why he’d left. </span>
  <em>
    <span>She doesn’t really love you, you need to leave for her to be happy, you’re giving her back the freedom you stole.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Then some desperate part of him would break all over again. Why the hell had he left her? She’d begged him not to do it, told him she loved him, told him she didn’t want to forget. Wasn’t using the sire bond to make her forget him just as bad as letting it fool her into thinking she loved him? Either way, she was living a lie. All he could do was choose which lie to let her believe.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Finally, he’d kicked the habit, taking up another instead. He’d drive aimlessly for as long as he could stay awake, then go to ground for a few days wherever he found himself, sampling the local populace and getting drunk enough that for an hour, thinking her name didn’t hurt.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The phone on the table wasn’t ringing anymore. Thank fuck for miniscule miracles. Whoever it was must have given up. Fine. Not like he cared, anyway. Except there was a tiny light flashing from the corner of the black screen, a white blip repeating every other second. What kind of telemarketer left a voicemail? Damon shut his eyes again, stubbornly refusing to give in to his curiosity. He wasn’t interested.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Five seconds later, he shoved himself up with a growl of exasperation. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway now, not with that thing flashing like a lighthouse across the room. The AC unit was blasting, and the scratched, cheaply varnished chair was freezing on the back of his legs, bare feet sticking to the grimy linoleum underneath the table. Unlocking his phone, Damon glared accusingly at the notification. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Nine </span>
  </em>
  <span>missed calls, and a voicemail? Who the hell was this desperate to talk to him? The number wasn’t one he knew. Pressing the button to listen to the voicemail, he leaned back, tipping his head to stare at the mysterious stains on the ceiling.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Damon,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>said a voice he knew, and he sat bolt upright, eyes widening in disbelief. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“It’s Jeremy. Gilbert. I know you didn’t want anyone to contact you, but I need you to call me back. It’s important. It’s...”</span>
  </em>
  <span> There was a long pause and Damon stared straight into the empty air, nails biting into the edge of the table as the plastic phone casing creaked in his other hand. He could </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel</span>
  </em>
  <span> it, feel her name hanging in the silence Jeremy didn’t fill. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Just...call me back. Please.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The message ended, and Damon stayed frozen for a single, incredulous second before a wave of anger overtook everything else. What the hell was the kid playing at? He’d been one of the advocates for Stefan’s idea - though really, everyone had. All too eager to get her back to being the girl they wanted her to be, devoid of imperfect feeling and imperfect judgement. As if they had any idea of who she really was. Damon snorted bitterly and stabbed the call button with more force than necessary.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jeremy answered almost at once. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Damon?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How did you get this number?” He demanded immediately. “And what the </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span> do you want?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was a crackly exhale of breath on the other end of the line, a sound of relief that Damon wasn’t used to being directed at him. People weren’t usually happy to hear from him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“I, uh, persuaded Caroline to get your number from Stefan’s phone. He doesn’t want us to call you.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, no shit, I told him I wanted--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Something’s wrong with Elena.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her name bloomed through his veins like the best kind of poison, even as instinctive panic took root. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to breathe through the heart now firmly lodged in his throat. It had taken him two months to scrape together his measly handful of self-control, and he needed every ounce of it now. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When he could speak again, Damon clenched his free hand into a fist on the table. “I never took you for the cruel type, Gilbert.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“What?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You know better than most why I </span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>be the one who gets her out of trouble anymore. I can’t even go near--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Forget all that,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> the kid burst out impatiently, cutting him off, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“it doesn’t matter anymore. We were all wrong. Making her forget about you didn’t work, the sire bond’s still there.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The assumptions that Damon had spent two months convincing himself were truths, fell to nothing in an instant. “What the hell are you talking about?” He hated the sick sense of </span>
  <em>
    <span>hope</span>
  </em>
  <span> that rose from their ashes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was a rush of muffled crackles on the other end of the line as Jeremy sighed explosively. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“After you left, Elena was...off. I mean, understandable, right? You rearranged, like, a big chunk of her brain and memories or whatever, and we all just thought she needed support and space, and that she’d get back to normal at her own pace.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He paused for an aggravatingly long time, and Damon gritted his teeth. “Spit it out, Gilbert,” he snapped. “I don’t need whatever amateur dramatics production you think this is.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“First she was just really unhappy,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jeremy continued as though he hadn’t spoken. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“And we all thought she was still just struggling with the whole vampire thing, but she just got worse and worse. She killed one girl at school, and we all figured it might be good if she stayed home until she got a handle on whatever was going on, but then she started getting...weird.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The kid was lucky Damon was across the country, or he might find his neck snapped all over again. “Weird </span>
  <em>
    <span>how?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“She started getting these pains in her head, she said they were just little twinges that came on and off, but they kept getting worse. And she does this thing, where - I don’t think she knows that she does it, and I’m not sure what’s going on in her head while it happens, but she zones out like she’s - I dunno. She’s just </span>
  </em>
  <span>gone</span>
  <em>
    <span> for a while, and then she comes back, and never remembers what happened while she was out. Like she’s just walking around in a coma.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was a sick feeling sinking through Damon’s stomach. He couldn’t stand to not be moving anymore, and jumped to his feet, leaving the phone on the table as he started grabbing up whatever clothes came to hand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“She said she knew there was something wrong with her,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jeremy’s voice was tinny, but Damon’s whole life revolved around his every word. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>But we couldn’t tell her anything without risking her - y’know, remembering. Bonnie couldn’t do anything, so we just had to tell Elena that there was nothing wrong with her and pretend like we weren’t worried. We figured, she’s a vampire, she has to fix herself at some point, right?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well, obviously </span>
  <em>
    <span>not,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Damon hissed in the direction of the phone, yanking a shirt over his head and buckling his belt. “You’re all fucking idiots!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I don’t know how, but Elena figured out there was something - well, some</span>
  </em>
  <span>one</span>
  <em>
    <span> - missing from her memory, but it was like trying to think about it was the thing that was hurting her, and the pain got real bad, like she was having seizures or something.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fuck, fuck, </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck!”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Hands beginning to shake from the panic, Damon stuffed everything else he could reach into his duffel bag.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“And when she did that zoning out thing, she started staying that way for longer and longer, like whole days where she wasn’t there at all. And two days ago, I came home and she--” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jeremy cut off, and Damon stopped dead in his frenzy of movement, staring at the phone as fear rose into his throat, a bitter grit on the back of his tongue. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Grabbing up the phone, he pressed it back to his ear. “What? What happened?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p><em><span>“I found her lying in her bed, eyes open like she - like she was </span></em><span>dead</span><em><span>, breathing and blinking but she just won’t </span></em><span>wake up.</span><em><span> Bonnie’s tried everything she’s got, Caroline and Stefan have tried getting into her head, but they said it’s like she’s put up a wall. She won’t let them in. Stefan said that no matter what, we had to keep you out of it, that we couldn’t risk her being sired to you again. But I don’t -</span></em> <em><span>I don’t care about any of that anymore. Obviously she still </span></em><span>is </span><em><span>sired to you, whether or not she can remember, and it’s fucking her up. And I don’t give a shit who she’s in love with,” </span></em><span>Jeremy added with fierce frustration. </span><em><span>“Anything’s better than her living like - like some coma patient that we can’t even </span></em><span>treat</span><em><span> because she’s a fucking </span></em><span>vampire</span><em><span> and I --” </span></em></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The kid cut off again, and Damon could hear his breathing, shaky and rapid down the line. Jaw clenched as he waited for whatever he was going to say next, Damon shoved his feet into his boots and yanked the door to his room open so viciously that the handle came off in his hand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jeremy didn’t even react to the noise. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“I don’t care anymore. If you have even a </span>
  </em>
  <span>chance</span>
  <em>
    <span> of helping her, then please, come back. Come help her.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jesus fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>Christ</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Gilbert,” Damon said, so incredulous he could have throttled the kid, “you really think you have to beg? I’m already on my way.” Rattling down the motel’s metal stairwell, slick with dew at this time of night, he threw open the trunk of his car, dumping in his duffel bag and slamming it shut. He had no time to moderate the violence of his actions, and the whole empty parking lot echoed with the jarring noise of it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Okay,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>the relief in Jeremy’s voice was nearly insulting. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Where are you? How quick can you get here?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m in Folsom.” In the driver’s seat, Damon started the engine and peeled out towards the highway, tyres screaming on the asphalt as the light in the manager’s office switched on. As an afterthought, he chucked the motel room key at the office window as he screeched past.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“California? Shit. It’s gonna take you, what, two, three days to drive back?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fuck that, I’ll fly,” Damon growled, ”I’m getting to the nearest airport, taking the first plane out, I’ll jack a car at Richmond, be there in twelve hours at the most.” He glanced at the clock on his dashboard. “Actually, make that ten.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“What about your car?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<span>“My car’s a fancy piece of metal, I don’t give a shit. This is </span>
  <em>
    <span>Elena.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you so much for reading! The next chapter will be up in a few days. Please do leave me a comment if you enjoyed!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. part three</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hi, thanks to everyone who's read and commented on this story! Hope you enjoy part 3, A Reckoning and An Explanation</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <span>One look at Stefan standing on the Gilbert font porch, and Damon was ready for a fight.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t be here,” Stefan began bluntly, before Damon had even shut the door of the car he’d hot-wired at Richmond. Damon didn’t know why he was surprised, but there was some pathetic little remnant of...disappointment, somewhere inside him. It was probably too much to hope that his little brother might have</span>
  <em>
    <span> missed</span>
  </em>
  <span> him, given the bad blood that ran between them like a river. But Damon had gotten soft, he’d actually missed having people around who, to some extent or another, cared whether he lived or died. Or would at least notice. He was under no illusions, though - he didn’t expect them to have missed him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Nice to see you, too, Stef,” he said shortly, slamming shut the car door.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Stefan folded his arms across his chest and set his mouth in a straight line. “I’m serious, Damon, you need to leave, right now. Jeremy should never have called you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Uh huh,” said Damon, eyes on the front door as he walked up the front steps. Stefan stepped into his path.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t go in there. We can’t risk her being sired to you again.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Without a second’s hesitation, Damon grasped his brother’s artfully dishevelled collar and hurled him easily back against the wall. The house’s wooden siding buckled behind him, and Stefan coughed out a wordless exclamation as the impact forced the breath from his lungs. Damon didn’t give him time to recover, pressing his forearm tight across his throat. “If you think you stand the tiniest chance of stopping me, go ahead and try, but at least give me the fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>courtesy</span>
  </em>
  <span> of being honest.” Stefan said nothing, expression sullen as a little boy’s. “Whether or not either of us like it, she </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> still sired to me, </span>
  <em>
    <span>clearly,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and you know that. You’ve known that for a while, and you still let her suffer, for </span>
  <em>
    <span>months.”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Damon could feel the black veins writhing around his eyes as his canines sharpened, ready to take a chunk out of Stefan if he made a wrong move. “So why don’t you admit what you’re really afraid of?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I want what’s best for her, I always have,” Stefan was fighting against his hold, nails cutting into Damon’s wrists as he tried to wrench his hands away.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, like </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck, </span>
  </em>
  <span>you little--”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Stop it!” He hadn’t even noticed the front door opening, but Jeremy stood in the doorway, arms folded across his chest and scowling. It was refreshing, however, to see that his ire seemed to be directed exclusively at Stefan. “Just </span>
  <em>
    <span>stop it. </span>
  </em>
  <span>We tried this your way, Stefan, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> is what it did to her.” He jabbed a finger angrily back over his shoulder, into the house. Damon’s hands dropped from his brother’s collar, caught in the idea that she was right </span>
  <em>
    <span>there.</span>
  </em>
  <span> If he moved a step or two to the side, would he be able to see her? How close was she? The door swung closed and Damon shook himself, wrenching his focus back to the stand-off between Jeremy and Stefan.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy was glaring viciously at Stefan, something Damon had never seen before, and he wondered how the dynamics of their dysfunctional little group had shifted in his absence. Sometime in the last two months, this moody little teen seemed to have finally grown up. “You need to back off.” Jeremy’s expression was uncompromising. “Elena’s my family, I’m not gonna let you make her decisions for her anymore.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“So, what, you’ve decided that’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>your</span>
  </em>
  <span> job now?” Stefan demanded rudely. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>To his credit, Jeremy didn't rise to the bait. “No. I think we’ve </span>
  <em>
    <span>all </span>
  </em>
  <span>made enough of a mess doing that. But right now, because of us, she </span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>make any decisions. So I’m going to do what I can, and what I know she would want.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“And what, you think she wants </span>
  <em>
    <span>him?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Stefan flung a derisive hand in Damon’s general direction. “You know what being around him did to her, you saw it.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I saw that he made her happy,” Jeremy seemed unmoved. “And that’s all I give a damn about. It’s all I want for her. Whatever else I might think about Damon, I know that he’ll take care of her, and I know he’d rather put a stake in his heart than hurt her. All you’ve done for a long time is hurt her, and this time I even helped you do it.” Regret lingered in Jeremy’s expression for a moment. “Damon is the best chance we’ve got - the best chance </span>
  <em>
    <span>Elena’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> got.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Before Jeremy had even finished, Stefan was already shaking his head in fierce denial. “No. We have options. If we can contact one of the Originals, maybe we could persuade them to help. They can compel any vampire, maybe they could break through that - that wall she’s put up in her mind.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You want an </span>
  <em>
    <span>Original</span>
  </em>
  <span> to go poking around in her mind?” Damon broke in, disbelieving. He didn’t actually care how this argument shook out - he wasn’t leaving Elena again, it was as simple as that, and he’d snap whatever neck he had to before he let anyone stop him. This bright idea, however, he couldn’t keep himself from questioning. “Even if we could trust any of them for a second, why would they help us? Unless something changed while I was gone, they’ve fucked off. Skipped town as soon as Elena’s blood stopped being useful to Klaus. They’re not our </span>
  <em>
    <span>friends.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“We don’t even know if it would work,” put in Jeremy. “None of us understand the sire bond, we have no idea what compulsion would do to her. I’m not gonna stand around and watch Elena’s brain melt out her ears just so you can pretend she’s the girl you used to know.” Stefan began to argue again, but Jeremy seemed to abruptly lose what little patience he had. “No, you know what? I don’t have to argue about this with you. Either get out of Damon’s way or get off my property.” Turning, he flung the door back open with defiant force. “Damon, please come in.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At any other time, Damon would have been at least mildly impressed by the kid’s moxie. But the door was open and there was nothing between him and Elena, and consequently there was nothing else at all. His feet took him over the threshold before he’d even realized he was moving, carrying him through the house that felt as familiar as home, as her. There were other people, he thought, someone said his name as he blew through, but he didn’t stop. He was up the stairs and through the hall, in the doorway of her bedroom.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>During the ten and a half hours Damon had spent getting to Mystic Falls, he’d imagined all kinds of horrible things. He’d imagined finding Elena blood-crazed, out of her mind from the damage he’d inflicted, reduced to nothing beyond a handful of animalistic hunting instincts and too far gone to recognise the people she’d known her whole life. He’d imagined her withered and insensate, in the same kind of coma that brain damaged humans fell into as a last, forlorn effort to protect what was left of their own minds. Although her vampire body ensured that starvation and muscle decay weren’t an issue, desiccation was still a rough equivalent, and he’d imagined her cheeks hollow, bones poking through grey skin as she shrank away before his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But she looked...peaceful. Ill-fed, maybe, and Damon still had to press down the urge to open his veins, pour whatever he could give down her throat as though that could still heal her. But mostly, she just looked like she was sleeping. Her breaths were deep and even, her face relaxed as she lay still on one side of her bed. Caroline occupied the other side, sitting with her back against the headboard and holding Elena’s listless hand, twining their fingers together.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She and Damon didn’t say a word to each other. The last words they’d exchanged had been too bitter, too deliberately and irretrievably injurious to take back now, or recover from while the object of their argument lay between them, suffering the consequences of what they’d both done to her. Instead, Caroline got up, moving out of his way without objection, and he took her place, pulling Elena gently into his arms, holding her as though she was brittle, as though she might dissolve into foam at any moment. Vaguely, he heard Caroline move to the other side of the room as the others filed silently through the bedroom door. He didn’t bother to look. As far as he was concerned, there was no else there at all - just him and his girl, the way it should have been from the start.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The sense of rightness that Damon had always felt when he held Elena settled over him, and he brushed his thumb down her cheek, a tender path from eyebrow to jaw. Two months without this had been...difficult. Unconcerned by his audience, Damon leaned down to touch his forehead to hers, closing his eyes for a moment as though he could join her in sleep.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Elena,” he opened his eyes, straightening up so that he could watch her face as he whispered to her. “Baby, I need you to wake up.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And miraculously, she did. Behind him, there were a few sounds of muted shock as her eyelids opened, blinking slowly in the light, lashes dark and heavy against her pallor. When her pretty, brown eyes met his, for a moment everything slotted back into place, as easy and natural as the breath in his lungs. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Then, obviously, it all went to hell. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elena's eyes rolled back in her head, lids scrunching closed as her body curled up defensively. She didn’t make a sound, but shook as though she was enduring torture, and panic exploded to life in Damon’s chest. Suddenly there were hands pulling insistently, trying to take Elena from his arms, and he lashed out instinctively, crushing one intruding wrist until he heard a sharp </span>
  <em>
    <span>crunch </span>
  </em>
  <span>and a cry of pain from its owner.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Damn it!” Stefan retracted his hands hastily, straightening the fractured bones with a petulant scowl. “Let her go, Damon, you’re hurting her!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He had no idea what in hell was happening, but unwilling to run the risk that Stefan might be right, Damon laid Elena down carefully and blurred into a corner of the room, staring in bewildered fear as her shuddering back stilled and she relaxed, curling up on her side. The room was silent as her breathing returned slowly to an even rate and she sank back into sleep.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I should have known something like that would happen,” muttered Jeremy from the doorway.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Paying attention to the others in the room for the first time, Damon glared at the idiot kid, while horrible, sick terror hammered in his chest. “Something like </span>
  <em>
    <span>that?</span>
  </em>
  <span> What </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> that?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy moved between Bonnie and Matt, crouching down by his sister to pull the blanket back over her. “Okay, so - I told you on the phone that she’s known for a while that someone’s missing.” He didn’t wait for Damon’s nod of assent, or look away from anxiously examining his sister’s face. “What she didn’t know was that she actually kept learning things about you by accident, she just couldn’t - I don’t know, hold onto any of it.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Which is </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span> weird to watch, by the way,” Caroline broke in, apparently unable to restrain herself for a moment longer. “What the hell did you sire her to do, Damon?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What did I </span>
  <em>
    <span>what?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>He had no idea what she was accusing him of now, but he didn’t like her tone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“‘Sire’, like, as a verb,” she replied impatiently, “that’s what we’ve been calling it. Like, ‘vampires can compel humans, Damon can sire Elena’.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That just sounds dirty,” objected Matt, “do we have to say that?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, because it makes sense,” Caroline insisted.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Bonnie stuck her oar into the bizarrely evolving argument. “Guys, this isn’t important. Can we just--”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Can you all just shut up?” Damon asked, incredulous</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“How about </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> shut up, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Damon?”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Shot back Caroline, glaring across the room at him. “For all we know, this is all your fault, none of us were there when you made Elena forget you, maybe you sired her to be like this because you couldn’t stand being the loser!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Would you stop using that as a verb?” Matt complained, as useless as usual, and Damon rolled right over him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, you know what, Barbie - fuck you!” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He took a single, irate step towards her, and Stefan muscled in front of her like the chivalrous little prick he always was. “Don’t talk to her like that!” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>His little brother looked ready to get his own back for the fractured wrist, and Damon was all too willing to hand out the beating Stefan had been asking for since he walked out onto the porch. “Whatever, fuck you, too!” By the door, Bonnie flung up her hands in exasperation, and Matt had resumed his argument with Caroline. “You really think I’d do anything to hurt her?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Uh, I don’t know,” Stefan really was remarkably ugly when he sneered, “‘snapping Jeremy’s neck’ ring a bell?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Shut up, Stefan,” Jeremy broke in with narrowed eyes, getting to his feet, “if I’m not mad about that then you don’t get to be, either. In fact, everyone, just --” he raised his voice, “shut up!” Surprisingly, they did. “If you’re not me, Bonnie or Damon, then just keep quiet. I didn’t ask you to be here. In fact --” he looked around. “Okay. Everyone downstairs. Even if Elena’s not gonna wake up, I don’t want her to somehow hear us yelling.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The rest of them traipsed reluctantly out of the room, one after the other, but Damon lingered by Elena’s bedside, looking down at her as Jeremy waited by the doorway. He reached out a hand, but didn’t dare touch her cheek. “What the hell happened, Gilbert?” He wasn’t even sure which Gilbert he was addressing, but it was Jeremy who answered.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s been a mess, dude. Come downstairs, I’ll tell you everything we’ve managed to put together.” When Damon didn’t move, he sighed. “She’ll be fine. She just sleeps.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the living room, Damon stubbornly refused to sit, folding his arms and staying closest to the stairs, ready to run to Elena if he heard the slightest sound. Everyone else positioned themselves nervously around the room, and once again he found himself wondering about the visible shift in the group dynamic. The subtle lines of allegiance and preference seemed to have intensified, the split in their opinions about Elena forming two (and a half) distinct factions - Jeremy and Bonnie on one side, Caroline and Stefan on the other, with Donovan caught somewhere in-between. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Caroline’s body language seemed centred around Stefan, every restless shift in his posture anxiously mirrored, though Stefan didn’t seem to notice. Two months ago, Damon would have made a sly remark to embarrass Blondie and point out her obviously repressed feelings for his dimwitted little brother, but just couldn’t find it within himself to care anymore. The same went for the obviously rekindled state of Bonnie and Jeremy’s relationship. The tentative links he’d felt to them all were severed, snapped by the hurt of being tossed out of the fold as nothing more than a nuisance and a malicious influence on Elena. Not completely unreasonable, of course - there wasn’t a single one of them he hadn’t screwed over in some way. And if it came down to a life or death decision, he’d pick Elena over every one of them every time.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“So?” Damon demanded bluntly, unwilling to waste any more time. “What just happened?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>All eyes turned to Jeremy and he sighed, sitting forward. “Like I told you on the phone, for the last two months Elena’s been getting worse and worse, in pain or just kind of - checking out, and the gaps in-between, when she was awake and not in pain, got shorter and shorter.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Skip to the bits I don’t know,” Damon ordered, impatient.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“About a week ago, I decided I couldn’t do this to her anymore. She wasn’t getting better and it just seemed - cruel. She’s known for a while that someone was missing from her memory, and knew that I knew more than I was telling her. So I told her about you, about the sire bond and that you’d made her forget you so that she could be - free.” Jeremy’s mouth turned down at the corners, the irony evidently tasting as bitter in his mouth as it did in Damon’s.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Wait, so she knows?” Across the room, Stefan’s interjection was confused - and annoyed. “You told her everything?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I tried,” Jeremy shrugged helplessly, “but she doesn’t remember any of it.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” God, was Stefan </span>
  <em>
    <span>trying </span>
  </em>
  <span>to slow them down?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“When I started to talk she just stared at me, and I thought maybe she was confused, or shocked, but after a while I started to realize, she literally didn’t understand me. Like I was speaking a different language. And when I said your name, it was like it actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurt </span>
  </em>
  <span>her, like stabbing a needle into her brain, she said. Then as soon as I stopped talking, it was all gone, she didn’t remember a thing.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“So what does that mean?” Matt asked from the armchair by the fireplace, face wrinkled in concern. “We can try to tell her the truth, but it won’t work?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I guess,” Jeremy nodded. “I’ve tried again, since then, but it’s like she physically can’t retain what I’m saying to her. She’s in pain, then as soon as I stop talking, she suddenly goes blank again, like I never started. And for the past two days --” he gestured exhaustedly. “You’ve all seen. Sometimes her eyes are open, as though she’s awake, other times she sleeps. She never seems to hear me, either way. Doesn’t respond if someone moves her. That, up there,” he jerked his head towards the stairs, “was the most animated she’s been in days.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Blondie took it upon herself to butt in, directing a stern look at Damon. “So, how are you going to…” She waved one hand imperiously, “fix her?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You think </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> know?” Annoyance instantly rekindled out of the worry that was eating his guts alive, Damon gave her a scathing glare. “I don’t even know what the hell I did to make her like this!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I might have an idea.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>His head snapped around to look at Bonnie in surprise. She’d said barely a word since he arrived, and he hadn’t paid her much attention, but she was holding an unfamiliar grimoire on her lap as she sat thigh to thigh with the littlest Gilbert.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve been looking into sire bonds,” she continued, tapping one finger on the book’s tattered binding. “I got in touch with my cousin, Lucy Bennet.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That witch bitch Katherine had on her payroll, way back when?” Damon curled his lip, unimpressed.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“She owed me a favour. Lucy put me in contact with a witch in Providence, Rhode Island, who’s been researching vampire sire bonds since the thirties. She had some insights that I think could help.” Her focus determined, Bonnie looked at Damon. “Damon, can you remember what exactly you said to Elena when you made her forget? Word for word?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Easy. He’d replayed it in his head a hundred times since leaving, and a hundred times more in the last ten hours. “‘If you want to make me happy then you're going to forget me.’” He swallowed. “‘You won’t remember my face, my name, anything about me. Forget you ever met me and never think about me again.’”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The room was silent. Damon could practically hear the click of gears as they all worked through what he’d said.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay,” Bonnie said, rubbing a hand over her forehead. “That makes sense.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Enlighten me,” replied Damon, tone clipped. It didn’t make a damn lick of sense from where he stood. Elena had taken his command more literally than he’d expected, sure, physically unable to remember his face or name - but she should be more like an amnesia patient than a coma patient, if that was the only issue.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“The problem is, when you used the sire bond on Elena, none of us actually understood what you were doing,” Bonnie explained with a sigh. “We all thought telling her to forget would work like compulsion, but Elena’s a vampire, and her brain doesn’t function like that anymore. Not without an Original’s power behind the command, anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>With a deep breath, Bonnie continued. “You could tell her to forget you, and the sire bond meant she had to do what you said. But you couldn’t command away the sire bond itself, because the reason it exists, her feelings for you - they’re still there, and nothing you could do would get rid of them.” She made a face, but continued. “The sire bond meant that she </span>
  <em>
    <span>couldn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>think of you, her brain wouldn’t allow her to know that you exist, but her love for you meant she </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> to, or at least try.” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span>Bonnie gestured helplessly. “Minds aren’t meant to support that kind of paradox - she couldn’t process something that her brain was literally incapable of holding.</span> <span>It’s a contradiction, and I think it was so fundamental that it caused her physical pain, whenever her feelings for you tried to break through the command you gave her.”</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“So, basically, Damon broke Elena’s brain.” Caroline’s petulance barely even registered. If she felt like heaping on the blame and guilt she’d have to get in fucking line, he was already neck deep and drowning.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Give it a rest, Caroline,” Jeremy shot at her. “You don’t have a leg to stand on.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She drew herself up, looking affronted. “Are you blaming </span>
  <em>
    <span>me </span>
  </em>
  <span>for th--?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“We </span>
  <em>
    <span>all </span>
  </em>
  <span>signed off on this,” Jeremy cut in. “You were one of the loudest voices in this, remember? We’re all just as much to blame for this, which you must know, or you wouldn’t have helped me by stealing Damon’s number from Stefan’s phone.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shutting her mouth with a click, Caroline shot an uneasy look at Stefan, visibly deflating when he refused to meet her gaze.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>God, but he really didn’t care about their little dramas. Damon whistled, an ear-splitting noise to bring the room to attention, and jerked his chin at Bonnie. “If the sire bond is still the root of the problem, did your Providence witch tell you if there’s a way to break it?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It doesn’t work like that.” She shook her head, faintly apologetic. “It’s not like the hybrid sire bond. I mentioned our experience with sire bonds, before all this, and my contact seemed to think that the hybrid sire bond is something completely different to the vampire version. From what I told her, she said it sounded like what Klaus’ hybrids experienced was just an intensified version of werewolf pack dynamics, where the pack’s alpha can be rejected or overthrown in the right circumstances. It doesn’t work like that with the vampire sire bond. We got it wrong when we compared the two, they’re not alike, or even equivalent. Actually,” she added, “it would probably be helpful if we found another name for the hybrid version.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“So how is the vampire version different?” Caroline asked.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Like I said, the bond is based on feelings that a person had before they were turned. Vampires are a different species. They’re individualistic, experience everything in extremes, and their love and loyalty can’t be magically manufactured like they can in werewolves, or hybrids. What they loved and hated when they were human is the same, but suddenly </span>
  <em>
    <span>more.</span>
  </em>
  <span> According to the Providence witch’s notes,” Bonnie tapped the grimoire on her lap, “the sire bond could only form because Elena already felt that much for Damon. All it would have done was force Elena to stop ignoring it. Sorry, Stefan,” she looked apologetically at his brother, who grunted ungraciously, but Damon was too far past caring to even feel the rancor that would normally inspire.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"So what you're saying,” he was surprised at how calm his voice was, almost apathetic, “is that Elena really did love me. And I paid her back by destroying her mind, then fucking off.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“And that we could have avoided this by just doing - like - an afternoon of research?" Caroline added in frustration.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Mutilated,” Jeremy muttered under his breath.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Frowning at him, Damon snapped his fingers to get the kid’s attention. “What?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It was something she said to me a couple of weeks ago,” he said slowly, looking down at his hands. “When she’d figured out I knew more than I was saying. That’s how she described it, she said she felt mutilated. Like someone had opened her up and taken parts of her out, then just sewed up the wound and left.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>If there was a name for this kind of self-loathing, Damon didn’t know it. It left regular self-loathing floating in the tropical shallows and plunged down deep into black depths, dragging him with it in its inescapable grip. Not that he fought it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You didn’t tell me about that,” Bonnie said quietly.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You couldn’t have done anything,” Jeremy mumbled in reply. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let this happen.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“None of us should have,” Stefan added soberly. “But we just wanted what was best for her. There’s no point in blaming ourselves for that.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s--” Bonnie started, then broke off for a second, pressing her lips together. “No. We didn’t want the best for her.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Obviously disconcerted, Stefan blinked at her. “What?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s not an excuse, for any of us,” she said firmly. “We didn’t like the decisions she was making, and jumped to conclusions that suited us. It wasn’t up to us to decide how she should feel, but we did anyway; we didn’t listen to her when she tried to tell us what she wanted, because we didn’t like it.” Damon stared at her. She caught his look of surprise and scowled back at him. "Look, I don't like you, and I think you're the worst mistake Elena's ever made, but that doesn't change the fact that it was her mistake to make. Deciding we knew what was good for her better than she did led us to --" She waved glumly at the stairs. "This." </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“But she was acting so --” Caroline wrinkled her nose pettishly. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Different.</span>
  </em>
  <span> How were we supposed to know it wasn’t the sire bond making her like that?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“She wasn’t acting different,” said Bonnie. “She was acting like she was in love, which she was.” Glancing at Damon, she grimaced. “Is. Whatever.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span>If he was a better man - if it was two months ago - Damon might have tried to tell them that whatever they’d decided was ‘best for Elena’, in their high-handed way, it had still been him. He’d been the one to tell Elena he loved her right before he’d cut out a piece of her mind, like some backstreet, hack surgeon with a shaky hand and a rusty scalpel. She’d begged him not to. He’d been the one who’d believed his laughably, </span><em><span>grotesquely </span></em><span>biased brother instead of her, all because Stefan knew just what insecurities to needle to make him act out. How had he fallen for that? Goddammit, he used to be smarter</span> <span>than this.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><span>But he wasn’t</span> <span>a better man, and it wasn’t two months ago. Damon had lived through those two months of misery, clinging by his fingernails to the idea that through every aching minute that he dragged himself, it was for her. Thinking that his sacrifice was </span><em><span>noble, </span></em><span>maybe the only really selfless thing he'd ever done, even if it slowly killed him. And for those two months, Elena’s nearest and dearest had been letting what little he’d left of her mind slip away while she begged for help. They’d known damn well what they needed to do, and refused to do it because of their stupid </span><em><span>fucking </span></em><span>grudges. </span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>So, no. He wasn’t feeling particularly better-man-ish right now. What he was, however, was tired, and really fucking pissed. Two months had dried up his supply of the milk of human kindness, (vampire kindness, whatever), which really hadn’t been all that abundant to begin with. All he wanted to do now was fix Elena, kiss her a few thousand times, tell her how sorry he was at least a few thousand more, and get them both the hell out of Dodge. In no particular order.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>With that in mind, Damon abruptly lost what little interest he’d had in the friends-of-Elena board meeting. Turning on his heel, he marched back up the stairs, barely sparing half an ear for the rest of them as their argument cut out and they began calling his name, confused. The stampede of their following feet only got faster when he shut the door to Elena’s door behind him with a sharp </span>
  <em>
    <span>snap.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>With as much care as he’d handle an injured bird, Damon lifted Elena gently into his lap, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t wake up. Leaning down, he pressed his lips to her forehead. “Hold on, sweetheart,” he muttered against her skin. “I’m gonna fix this, okay?” He closed his eyes. The noise of too many voices all talking at once and the door opening followed him down, as he sank through Elena’s consciousness like falling into dark water.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading! Please do leave me a comment if you enjoyed this chapter, and come back in a couple of days for the penultimate chapter :D</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. part four</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hi, welcome to the penultimate chapter of this story - the anticipated reunion. Hope you enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Every mind was different, of course. Damon had wandered through scores over the course of his undead life, though only a few of those had been the minds of other vampires. Vampires tended to have stronger mental barriers in place; even the younger ones were often a challenge when it came to anything past surface thoughts. It wasn’t his first time in Elena’s mind, though he hadn’t peeked since the first few weeks after he’d moved back to Mystic Falls, nearly two years ago. And if he hadn’t known for sure that it was her mind, he wouldn’t have recognised it, now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Where there should be surface thoughts, fleeting impressions, snippets of replaying memories pulled momentarily from deeper in her mind, there was...nothing. Just the blank silence of empty space. It was always difficult to rationalise or conceptualise what it was like to wander through someone’s mind, but Damon thought this wasn’t dissimilar to standing in a vast room, empty and pitch dark. Or maybe it was more like sinking beyond the twilight zone in the open ocean. No light, and no way to know which way was up anymore.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It was all wrong. Whatever metaphor he tried, there was nothing Damon could do to get around the fact that this was bad. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Really </span>
  </em>
  <span>bad. Downright unnatural. The most impulsive, teeming, immediate part of her mind was empty - the kind of emptiness that reeked of fear, that told him there was something bad, down there in the gloom.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Without even trying, Damon found himself slipping further down. He had no idea how deep he was now; it was all just black, and empty, and cold to the touch. The further he sank, the more strained the desolation became. Disturbed, as though there was something hungry and chained, just out of sight and gnawing at its leg to get free. The unnatural vacuum hummed with the tension of dreadful inevitability, and he could feel the metaphorically shaking muscles behind Elena’s tenuous hold on her control.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He sank and sank, falling easily through what should have been complex layers of consciousness - too easily. What should have been cluttered with everything that made Elena </span>
  <em>
    <span>her,</span>
  </em>
  <span> echoed with the absence of a gutted, burned-out home. It occurred to him that whatever barrier Caroline and Stefan had encountered in Elena’s mind, he’d yet to find it. Then suddenly, he did.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Inasmuch as Damon could compare the incomparable, the sudden and jarring halt of progress was something like hitting a wall. He couldn’t sense any end to it, in any direction. It existed inarguably, stretched infinitely around whatever Elena was trying to keep contained. Or maybe protected? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He laid a hand on the conceptual barrier. It felt like her. It felt like her fear, her suffering, her desperation for self-control when every other part of her life was unravelling. He’d lost count of the times he’d seen this kind of fear in her eyes, and after a while, he’d found (to his never-ending surprise) that </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>was the thing she held onto when everything was at its worst.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>This was where his brother and Caroline had failed - the impregnable wall that Elena had built around herself. Whatever remained of her, anyway. Now that he was facing it down, Damon didn’t have any idea where to start. How the fuck was he supposed to do anything about it, sire or not? She’d locked herself up in her own little Alcatraz, away from the world and away from whatever could hurt her. Him, for a start.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Well, he lost nothing by asking, he guessed. “Elena,” he began quietly, hand spreading wide on the metaphysically impassable wall. “Can you let me in?” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>To his surprise, the wall dissolved. Or maybe he dissolved through the wall? If the rules of gravity or anything else had applied, Damon would have fallen flat on his face, but as it was, he found himself standing in - his own bedroom?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Unlike the dreamlike confusion outside, in here, everything felt comfortably solid and familiar. More concretely </span>
  <em>
    <span>real</span>
  </em>
  <span>, even if logically Damon knew that it wasn’t. Sunlight streamed through the windows where the heavy curtains stood half-open, and the diamond latticing cast its pattern in relief across the room. Behind him, the bedroom door closed quietly of its own volition, but Damon couldn’t bring himself to look back at it. Elena was curled up under the rumpled sheets on his bed, sleeping quietly. Her hair caught the early morning light where it lay across one white pillow, head sunk deeply into another, and as he looked she heaved a deep breath, shuffling around onto her back and flinging one arm out above her head with a sleepy </span>
  <em>
    <span>mmph</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Damon didn’t bother to stand around and think. He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand where it lay stretched out on the pillow, fingers curled loosely towards her palm, and leaned down to kiss the bridge of her nose. Her eyelids moved, mouth pursing as she began to stir, and Damon watched uneasily, hoping against the pit in his stomach that this wouldn’t be like the last time.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elena blinked fuzzily, and the little pout on her lips turned upwards into a smile. “Hi,” she mumbled, extricating the hand that was buried under the sheets to rub sleepily over her eyes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi,” Damon whispered back, swept under by a wave of relief and love-sick idiocy, a wide and stupid grin spreading over his own face in answer. Elena’s smile got bigger, and she fumbled around, holding up the sheet for him to crawl under. Without a single thought or word, he kicked off his boots and scrambled in, wriggling an arm underneath her and pulling her tight against his body so he could bury his face in her neck. Nose pressed underneath her ear, Damon exhaled a deep and shaky breath. Even if this wasn’t strictly </span>
  <em>
    <span>real,</span>
  </em>
  <span> it was still her, and she felt exactly right, slim and warm and solid, one arm around his back while the other hand raked drowsily through his hair. For the last two months he’d tried futilely to remember exactly how she smelled, but had never got it quite right - the warmth of her skin mingling with soap and nutmeg and cotton in unique alchemy.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elena hitched her leg over his hip and he curled a hand under the bend of her knee, pulling back to kiss her, getting the Elena-fix that he’d been without for far too long. He’d only ever really had this once, in truth, one sun-soaked morning that he hadn’t let himself think about since he left. But once was all it had taken, and he’d been irretrievably hooked ever since.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re wearing my shirt,” Damon mumbled when his brain came back online.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It was in your closet,” she replied, just as quiet. Neither of them broke the hush of the morning. “It smells like you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It occurred to him to ask why they were in his bedroom, but he found he was far too happy to care, for the moment. Elena touched her little thumb to the point of his chin and kissed him, lips turning up at the corners when he wrapped his arms around her waist and rolled them, landing on his back among the bank of feather pillows.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>With a hum of pleased contentment, Elena pillowed her cheek on Damon’s chest and took hold of a handful of his t-shirt, securing it in her fist as though she was worried he might slip away. He knew exactly how she felt. His own grip on her was nothing less than fierce, tangling their legs together and holding her to him with arms like a vise. Damon pressed his lips to the crown of her head, breathing in.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Sleep was the last thing on his mind, and for what must have been an hour and more, he trailed his fingers over Elena’s skin, playing with glossy strands of her hair and watching how the sunlight glowed through. He could feel the tiny brush of her eyelashes as she blinked slowly, the warmth of her breath over his throat and the muted thud of her heart against his ribs. Eventually, he let the long strand of dark hair in his hand fall back onto the pillow. “I really, </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>hate to rock the boat,” he started reluctantly, then stopped, already cursing himself.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Propping her chin up on his chest, Elena tapped his sternum with one fingertip, bringing his gaze down to hers. “What?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“The light’s not changing.” With a jerk of his chin, Damon pointed out the beams of sunlight that fell through the window in straight, stagnant lines. “It’s been over an hour, and it still feels like six a.m. on a summer morning.” In all this time, not a single thing had moved, but for them. Not one cloud had marred the room’s sun-golden glow; the branches he could see through the windowpane were quite still, static to an unnatural degree. Not so much as a single dust mote drifted through the unmoving room.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh.” Apparently uninterested, Elena dropped her head back down. “No, it never changes here. Nothing does.” Damon felt her little sigh of contentment as she nuzzled her cheek against his collarbone. “It’s always just like this.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Something began sinking uneasily through Damon’s gut and he closed his eyes for a moment, wishing he could just lie here with her, forget everything about why he’d come here. “Sweetheart, don’t you think it’s time to wake up?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He sensed rather than saw her frown of confusion. She lifted away from him, propping herself up on her elbows. “I am awake.” Putting a gentle hand on his cheek, she smiled happily. “I’m right here with you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“No, you’re not,” Damon felt a swell of heart-sick sadness. “You know where we are, honey, and you know it’s not right. Don’t you want to wake up for real? Come back to me.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elena’s smile faded, expression dropping, and she retracted her hand. Sitting up, she put her back to the headboard and curled her legs up to her chest. “It hurts, out there.” He sat up too, shoulders touching as he waited for her to continue. “It hurts to remember,” she explained with an air of melancholy. “It hurts to think about you, it hurts to </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> think about you.” Resting her cheek on the point of her knee, Elena smiled sadly at him. “In here, nothing hurts at all.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Why do you know who I am in here, but not out there?” He didn’t really need to ask, but needed to know how much she was aware of. Did she remember what had happened to her over the last two months?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t really know. I’ve been coming here for a while, I think, though I never remembered after. It’s the only place I could love you, locked up safe in here. I think it’s deep enough that when you told me to forget you, it couldn't reach.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You remember that?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“In here, I do.” She nodded, then indicated the door with a bob of her head. “Out there, I don’t. So in the end, when it hurt too much, I just came down here, and stayed.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There was an ache in Damon’s chest that he didn’t try to soothe. She must have seen it in his expression, and she wound her arms around his neck, looking up into his face beseechingly. “It’s better in here. Nothing to worry about, no pain at all. You want that, don’t you? You deserve some peace. We both do.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It would be easy. Far too easy. Temptingly, frighteningly easy to just lie down with her and close his eyes, stay here forever where her sleepy, peaceful deception was so perfectly held. But he remembered too clearly the unnatural desolation that he’d passed through to find her, the strain and the damage he'd felt crying out all around him in the silence. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I can feel how hard it is for you to keep everything locked up in here, baby. You’re fighting so hard to stay in control, to keep up this illusion you’ve made for yourself. We can’t stay here.” Elena just shook her head stubbornly, arms slipping from around his neck as she dropped her face into his shoulder. He pulled her into his side, trying a different tack. “Even if we could, our bodies would desiccate, out there in the real world. You don’t want my sexy body to get all grey and nasty, do you?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She didn’t laugh, as he’d hoped. She didn’t even smile. “I’m so tired, Damon. I’ve been tired for so long, and - I don’t want to fight anymore. For so long as a human I had this - this sword hanging over me. Becoming a vampire was awful, I was terrible at it, but I was finally free of all that doppelganger bullshit, and I had you.” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elena lifted her head to look at him again. “I was happy, and I thought I could have that forever. Then you </span>
  <em>
    <span>left,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> her voice broke, and it felt like a physical blow. “And everything was just - so much worse, and I didn’t even know why. I killed someone, and I barely even remember doing it,” she confessed, breath hitching unevenly, “I don’t feel hunger in here. I’m safe, and everyone else is safe from me. My friends don’t have to babysit me, Jeremy doesn’t have to worry that one day I’m gonna snap and kill him.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry I left,” he told her quietly. “I shouldn’t have made you forget.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You should have listened to me,” she said unhappily, looking away.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I should have, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t believe that you could really love - y’know, </span>
  <em>
    <span>me.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I did. I do.” Her jaw was set and she linked her fingers tightly in her lap. It wasn’t fair that her admission made Damon </span>
  <em>
    <span>happy,</span>
  </em>
  <span> when all it had ever brought her was grief. Fuck, why couldn’t he have just gotten over himself and taken her at her word, months ago? For nearly two years, he’d wallowed in his love for her, practically defining himself by it. And then, at the moment he was within an </span>
  <em>
    <span>inch</span>
  </em>
  <span> of being happy, he’d panicked at the first sign of trouble and left an even worse mess behind than usual.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I know I’ve fucked up more times than I’ve got any right to. I’m shit at knowing what the right thing is, and I’ll probably never stop fucking up, but I promise, I’m never gonna make this mistake again. I shouldn’t have decided I knew what was best for you. And if you wanna kick my ass for it, fine, that’s fair, but you’re gonna have to come back to do that, okay? Because I bet beating me up in here wouldn’t be half as satisfying.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I thought we’d just decided that you don’t always know what’s best for me?” Elena snapped acidly. “Are you gonna force me into this, like you did before?” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Biting down the immediate retort that rose to his lips in response to the well-deserved sting of her words, Damon had to admit that he recognised the uneasy irony. He’d been sure of his actions before, and been proved drastically wrong.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry. I can’t let you sleep away your chance at life.” He took a deep breath. “At a life together, if that’s still what you want.” It was a long shot, if he was honest. What were the chances that Elena would still want anything to do with him? He didn’t know how he was going to be able to meet her eye, if he could ever get her out of here. There was a vicious voice in his head that said he needed to leave again, that he was no good for her, that he should put her back together and then leave her alone, for good. Two months ago, he might have listened to it. But the man he’d been two months ago had been an idiot, and he wasn’t going anywhere.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elena was quiet, and Damon held himself in place, though he wanted to turn her face to his and beg her to tell him that he hadn’t fucked it all up beyond repair.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I still want that. I still want you.” She took his hand, turning it over in her grasp so that she could press her palm to his, and the tight, suffocating coil in Damon’s chest released. “I’m still angry with you. I’m angry at all of them, out there.” Elena jerked her chin towards the door. “They knew what was happening, and they just - </span>
  <em>
    <span>watched. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Did you know?” She kept her gaze averted, still, as though she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“No, I swear I didn’t know. Jeremy called me last night and I got the first plane out.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Where were you?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“California.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Were you ever gonna come back?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“No.” He felt the hurt cut through her as though it was his own, but he wasn’t going to lie to her. “I thought staying away was the only way you’d be happy. I thought you’d have gone back to Stefan, or something.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s not gonna happen, Damon. Even if I wasn’t in love with you, even if you had nothing to do with it, I still wouldn’t go back to him. I don’t love him like that anymore. I changed, so did he.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>For the first time, Damon actually let himself believe her, and nodded silently, folding his fingers around hers. “If it makes you feel better, I was miserable the whole time I was away. Everywhere I went, all I could think about was what you’d think of it, what you'd say, what we’d do if it was us seeing the world together.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elena let out a little huff of air that was </span>
  <em>
    <span>nearly</span>
  </em>
  <span> a laugh, and looked cautiously up at him “Where would we go?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He raised his eyebrows. “You’d want to leave Mystic Falls?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I wanted to stay before so I could look after my brother, be near my friends. Finish high school,” she added ruefully. “Well, Jeremy’s been doing fine looking after himself, and me, and it’d probably be safer for him if I stayed away for a while. And I think, maybe,” she paused, looking troubled. “I wouldn’t want to be around my friends. Just for a little while.” Damon hated the sadness, the hurt in her face, but knew there was no way around it. With visible effort, Elena pulled a small smile together. “We’d have forever, right? I could finish high school whenever I wanted, or I could just compel a college admissions officer.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, sure,” he shrugged, going for nonchalance while his heart battered out a mile a minute. “We’d have forever. Anywhere you want to go, anything you want to do, we can. Road-trips are our thing, right? Ever been to New York?” She shook her head. “Then we’ll start there, work our way up the east coast, then loop down and do zig-zags across the country, go see every cheesy roadside attraction in the Midwest. We can go break my car out of whatever Sacramento impound lot it ended up in.” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her smile was growing more genuine, and Damon continued, encouraged. “We can hit Vegas and compel our way into the Caesar’s Palace penthouse, go to Beverly Hills and see what celebrity blood tastes like.” He expected the indignant poke in his side, and grinned. “If you want, we can go see the rest of the world. Did you know the Salvatore family still owns a villa in Italy?” Elena shook her head, looking absorbed in his monologue. “I’ve been there a few times, but I bet I’d have a lot more fun if you were there, too. You’d love Italy, baby, we could go make it our home for a while. In fact, any place you like enough, we’ll set up shop, get a house and live there as long as you want.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What about Asia?” Elena asked, eyes bright. “I wanted to go to India when I was little.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Anywhere, anything you want.” Mentally crossing his fingers, Damon took a deep breath and rolled the dice. “But sweetheart, we can’t do any of that from in here.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There was a short silence. Elena didn’t look away, her eyes searched his face intently, and he held her gaze, trying to project all the surety he could summon. At last, at </span>
  <em>
    <span>last,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she nodded slowly. “Yeah. I know.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah. Okay,” she said, pensive, nearly resigned. “What are we going to do about the sire bond?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Bonnie said we can’t break it,” Damon frowned. “And I fucked it up so badly last time, I don’t think I want to mess around with it again. I guess I’ll just - try not give you any commands?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Un-bossy Damon. Wow. Never met him.” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her stone-cold deadpan made him smile for a second, but it faded. “I’m serious, Elena. I don’t ever want to make you do anything you don’t want to. It’s why I--” He broke off, but knew she understood.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I know. But despite everything, I trust you, okay? I trust that you’ve learned. We'll work on it, but for now just don’t tell me to do anything you know I wouldn’t want to do and we’ll be alright. I’m still mad at you, though,” she tacked on, pointing a finger at him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s okay. I’ve got a long time to get back into your good graces.” She gave a short shriek as he dragged her sideways into his lap, cutting off when he kissed her. “Ready to go back?” He asked, nudging her nose with his.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“No, but --” She shrugged tensely, hands fastening securely behind his neck. “Might as well bite the bullet, right?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s the spirit, kitten.” Through force of habit, he held her gaze as though he could still compel  her. “I need you to remember. Remember everything I told you to forget, it won’t hurt anymore. I need you to wake up.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The door unlocked with a hollow click, and the sunlit room dissolved.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks so much for reading! Just the epilogue to go, now. I hope you all enjoyed this resolution, please do review this chapter and tell me what you thought :D</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hi, thanks so much for getting this far, and thanks to all the people who have read and commented, it means a great deal. I hope this epilogue wraps this story up for you, and gives Delena a little bit of the happiness they need.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>A storm was moving in over the foothills to the south, and the heat of the afternoon was slowly giving way to the heavy humidity that always preceded thunder. Looking appraisingly up at the clouds overhead, iron grey and rolling like the sea, Elena put down her pen, tucking her notebook into her pocket, and went down the front steps to pick up her terracotta pot of struggling rosemary. She moved it under the shelter of the balcony and the trailing vines of a climbing jasmine, knowing that the battering effects of a heavy rain probably wouldn’t be good for it. Walking around the house to the kitchen, Elena paused to close the cellar door - if the rain flooded the empty wine barrels, Damon would pout for weeks. </p><p> </p><p>The kitchen was quiet and hot, fogged from the steam of two simmering pots on the stove, and Elena paused long enough to pour coffee grounds into the machine and turn it on. Even after three years of travel and two years settled in Italy, her American tastebuds still preferred coffee the way she’d learned to make it as a human. </p><p> </p><p>She waited for it to brew, fanning the back of her neck absently as she tried to read a leaflet left on the kitchen table, with little success. The last two years of blissful domesticity on the Salvatore ancestral lands had given her a rudimentary knowledge of Italian, but she was still sadly lacking. Damon, who had been fluent from childhood, found it hilarious to watch her try to communicate with the locals in the village who, to their credit, were very patient with her. Elena did, however, often have the satisfaction of watching Damon flounder helplessly whenever he spoke to their housekeeper, who was short, wizened, and bossy, and spoke in run-on sentences of thickly-accented Italian which were a challenge even for Damon’s fluency. Granted, Elena only ever understood about a third of what their housekeeper, whose only name seemed to be ‘Nonna’, said to her, but Nonna’s energetic gestures and operatically expressive tone were usually enough for Elena to understand what she meant.</p><p> </p><p>Nonna never really seemed to mind monologuing to a largely uncomprehending audience, and guided Elena through the planting of her very own vegetable garden, where she tried her best to grow tomatoes, herbs and eggplant, with mixed success. Even Nonna’s intricate and idiosyncratic advice couldn’t completely compensate for Elena’s sad lack of a green thumb.</p><p> </p><p>Pouring her coffee, Elena carried it carefully across the courtyard in the centre of the villa. The first fat drops of rain were already beginning to leave large, circular spots on the blond paving stones, and she held a hand over her mug, hurrying up the stairs to the covered gallery that ran around the upper floor’s interior, overlooking the courtyard.</p><p> </p><p>Upstairs, in the sitting room that faced down into the valley, Elena set down her coffee and pulled open the doors to the balcony, hoping that the storm would blow fresh air through the room. Down in the valley, a church bell was tolling, the sound carrying up to the villa, and a car wound down the hillside road towards the village. The cicadas’ usual clamour had quietened ahead of the rainstorm, and the cypress trees that lined the long, meandering driveway began to sway in the cool wind.</p><p> </p><p>Two figures were running up through the olive grove and Elena smiled, knowing how much it must be annoying Damon to have to move at a human speed, when he’d rather be inside already and out of the thickening rain. The figure beside him tripped, the boy’s gangly limbs slipping awkwardly on the wet grass, and Damon pulled him back up by his elbow, patting the kid bracingly on the shoulder. Angelo was Nonna’s grandson, a shy boy of eighteen who always made Elena a bit nostalgic for her own little brother. They’d employed him, among others, nearly a year ago, for the first grape harvest since Damon had taken over the running of the Salvatore vineyard.</p><p> </p><p>When they’d visited the villa four years ago as a brief first stop on their European travels, having already spent a year seeing everything that the U.S. had to offer, Damon had taken an interest in the vineyard. Two years later, they’d come back to make the place their home, and it had been funny and touching in equal part to learn about Damon’s hidden but deeply abiding interest in wine. He’d admitted it to her as though it was his darkest secret, which she’d found hilarious, but she assured him that she didn’t think it made him less badass if, behind closed doors, he preferred a well-aerated red to a manly tumbler of bourbon. He still groaned whenever she called him a farmer, but loved to bring cupfuls of their Lambrusco for her to sample, nonetheless. And although in truth Elena could barely tell one wine from another, she loved how much uncomplicated happiness it gave him to see her try.</p><p> </p><p>It couldn’t last forever, and they both knew that. Three or four years more at the most, and they’d have to leave, before people could notice that they weren’t aging. They’d have to say they were moving too far away to visit, and manage the villa and vineyard indirectly. In sixty years or so they’d be able to come back and present themselves as the new generation of Salvatores, having ‘inherited’ the property and business. </p><p> </p><p>Impermanence was the price to pay for a permanent state of being, Elena supposed, but it bothered her less than it would have half a decade ago. The rift between her and those she’d left behind in Mystic Falls was healed, but the scar remained, and although having her roots severed so violently had been cripplingly painful, it had left her with a sense of freedom that she’d never had before. Damon had helped her celebrate a life unfettered for as long as she'd wanted, always happy to be by her side as she discovered what the world had to offer, and when she had wanted a home to call their own, he’d given her this one.</p><p> </p><p>Elena leaned one shoulder against the balcony door and sipped at her coffee, listening to Damon give Angelo the rest of the day off (she thought?) in rapid Italian, as they stood under the archway of the courtyard. The boy jogged out to his car, tanned hands pulling futilely at his collar against the heavy rain. The engine started and she watched the tiny, ancient Fiat chug its way down the serpentine driveway towards the road. Cocking her head, she waited to hear Damon’s footsteps on the stairs, but couldn’t hear anything over the drumming of the rain. She turned to look at the doorway, then jumped in shock when a pair of hands fastened around her waist.</p><p> </p><p>“Eavesdropping?” Said a voice in her ear. Elena turned to find Damon grinning smugly behind her on the balcony. He kissed her before she could ask when he was going to learn to use doors like a normal person. At nearly one hundred and seventy-seven, she was pretty sure the answer would be ‘never’, anyway. His lips were eager on hers and he smelled of warm earth and bruised vine leaves, and of the raindrops that dampened his shoulders and hair.</p><p> </p><p>“How do you always manage to sneak up on me, when I can never catch you by surprise?” She asked with insincere chagrin, once he’d put her down. “It’s not fair.”</p><p> </p><p>“Age has its benefits,” Damon shrugged smugly as he took her coffee and drank half of it in one go. “You’re not as sneaky as you think you are, sweetheart, I always hear you a mile off.”</p><p> </p><p>Taking back her cup, Elena stepped around him to look out at the rain, tugging on his hand to bring him with her. He folded his arms around her middle and pulled her back against his chest, kissing her temple as the rain fell in sheets, beginning to rise to its crescendo now.</p><p> </p><p>“You should have made Angelo stay until the rain stopped,” she said, the thought suddenly occurring. “It might not be safe to drive down the hill in these conditions. His car has to be at least twice as old as him, and probably hasn’t been serviced since before he was born.”</p><p> </p><p>“He’ll be fine, the rain won’t last,” Damon replied, unconcerned, then squeezed her waist, looking down at her with an impish gleam in his eye. “He probably would have stayed if he thought he had a chance of seeing <em> you, </em> though. Kid’s definitely got a crush.”</p><p> </p><p>“Don’t be mean. He’s a nice boy.”</p><p> </p><p>“Uh-huh. Unluckily for him, you’ve got more discerning standards.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, yeah?” Elena raised an eyebrow. “What discerning standards are those?”</p><p> </p><p>“Tall-ish, dark and blood-drinking.” She turned her face into his neck, muffling a laugh, and Damon took her hand. “Doesn’t matter, anyway; he can crush on you all he wants, but I’m the one that put a ring on it.” He ran his thumb over the gold band on her fourth finger, brushing over its sapphire cluster counterpart. They’d got married in a chapel in Norway, during the first months of their European travels, then they’d spent nearly the next two years honeymooning all over the world.</p><p> </p><p>Elena ran her fingers over the corresponding gold band on Damon’s left hand, where it rested on her stomach. “Do you need to go back down to the vineyard when the rain stops?”</p><p> </p><p>“Nah, we were finished for the day, anyway. How’s your chapter going?”</p><p> </p><p>“Pretty good. I was editing the last bit when the storm started. I’ll start typing it up tomorrow.”</p><p> </p><p>He nodded, and dragged a stubbly cheek affectionately over her neck. The rain roared, its deafening white noise swallowing up every other sound from outside those four walls, and Elena leaned her head back against Damon’s shoulder, enjoying the comforting sense of protective enclosure. Raindrops striking the balcony floor sent tiny, cool splashes flicking onto her bare legs, and their contrast with her skin made her shiver. Damon pulled her closer in response, exhaling a stream of warm air over the back of her neck, and held her tight while the rain began to slacken, gutters gushing as the raindrops spattered down unevenly. </p><p> </p><p>“Did you call Jeremy back?”</p><p> </p><p>Turning her head, Elena cocked an eyebrow. “Did <em> you </em> call <em> Stefan </em>back?”</p><p> </p><p>“No,” Damon replied, uncontrite. “But I can’t stand my little brother. You’re okay with yours.”</p><p> </p><p>She rolled her eyes, but didn’t argue. “I did call Jeremy back. He just wanted to talk about Bonnie applying for grad school at Tulane. I told him everything would be okay, that they could make long distance work, but, honestly,” she shook her head, “I don’t think they’re gonna last much longer. Jeremy was already disappointed when she didn’t transfer to NYU for her senior year of college, and nowadays they just want different things. Studying occult history is everything to her, Jeremy’s illustration apprenticeship is everything to him. He can’t move away from New York, and if she’s accepted then Bonnie won’t be able to move away from New Orleans.”</p><p> </p><p>“He’ll get over it, eventually,” Damon said assuredly. “I mean, they’ve been on-again off-again so many times I lost count. Some day they’re gonna have to call it quits.” Elena appreciated his engagement, if not his flippancy, knowing that he really didn’t care about her brother’s relationship, but still made the effort for her.</p><p> </p><p>“If they do break up, I might ask him to come visit. You could put him to work in the olive grove or the vineyard, take his mind off it.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sure, if it means I get to order little Gilbert around and not get yelled at for it.” He nudged his chin against her temple, and Elena smiled, stepping quite deliberately on his foot with her bare heel. </p><p> </p><p>Smile fading, she watched raindrops splatter off the balcony railing. “I just wish--” she stopped abruptly, then started again. “It would have been nice if Bonnie had told me about grad school herself, but --” Elena shrugged resignedly. Bonnie had never stopped feeling guilty for not being the one to fix her after the sire bond debacle, all those years ago, and rebuilding their relationship had been difficult when Bonnie herself refused to be forgiven. It had left Elena no room to express her hurt, her resentment, in case it made Bonnie shut herself off still further. ‘Best friend’ had become ‘friend’, and increasingly it felt as though ‘Jeremy’s girlfriend’ was more apt.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, I know, baby.” Turning his wrist, Damon took the hand that had rested over his and squeezed. “It sucks.”</p><p> </p><p>Elena nodded silently, knowing that after so long, talking more about it wouldn’t help the hurt she still felt. “Are you really not gonna call Stefan back?”</p><p> </p><p>“Nah, I will. Eventually. I know what he wants to talk about, anyway.”</p><p> </p><p>“What?”</p><p> </p><p>“Blondie still won’t let him bring up moving away from Mystic Falls. He’s worried she hasn’t accepted that sooner or later, it won’t be safe anymore. People are gonna start to realize that she looks suspiciously <em> seventeen </em>for a woman in her mid-twenties.”</p><p> </p><p>“Caroline’s never been great at letting go. It gives her amazing self-control,” Elena allowed, “but I think it’s gonna be hard for her to realize that she can’t stay in her hometown forever. Hey--” tapping Damon’s forearm with her free hand, Elena turned her head to look back at him. “Maybe we should invite <em> her </em> to come visit. Show her life outside Mystic Falls.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, God,” Damon groaned, dropping his forehead dramatically onto her shoulder. “Please, no. Absolutely not, she’ll make my life hell. She still thinks it’s my fault you left.”</p><p> </p><p>Caroline, bless her black and white heart, hadn’t had anywhere near as much trouble as Bonnie in forgiving herself for her part in the sire-bond incident. She’d evidently decided her remorse went without saying, and skipped straight ahead to nagging Elena to come home for the first year after she and Damon had left Mystic Falls. When they’d flown overseas she’d got the message, for the most part, but still seemed to regard their absence as merely an extended and rather inconsiderate holiday.</p><p> </p><p>“We’ll see, okay? She might not agree to visit, anyway, if we don’t invite Stefan, too. They’re inseparable.”</p><p> </p><p><em> “No,” </em> Damon said firmly, “No way am I putting up with his goddamn broody face at breakfast every morning, or letting him tell me how I’m fucking up the family estate, or giving me the stink-eye because he still prefers my wife to his girlfriend.”</p><p> </p><p>Elena made a face. “Yeah, okay. You might have a point.”</p><p> </p><p>“Anyway,” Damon continued unrepentantly, “I already spun Stefan a line about how the villa’s being restored and it’s too chaotic for visitors. That should give us at least another year in the clear.”</p><p> </p><p>Snorting, Elena turned around in his arms and linked her hands behind his neck, pecking a kiss on his chin. “We’ll go back, right? I mean, someday I want to go to college.”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, of course,” he replied easily. “Someday soon someone’s gonna get married and send us an invitation, and then we’ll have to go back. Though they’re all gonna be mad that we never told them we got hitched already without them.”</p><p> </p><p>Elena nodded. “But not yet.” Behind her, the sun bloomed from behind the heavy clouds, the last drops of rain splashing from the roof-tiles onto the balcony.</p><p> </p><p>“No. Not yet. For now, you’re all mine and I’m all yours.” He kissed her, and the red wine was sweet on his mouth.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And that's that! Thanks to everyone, I hope you enjoyed. Please do leave a comment and let me know! &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>